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Bernard: Here's how to get America's fiscal house in order

updated Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - 6:19pm

How to fix America’s fiscal house

I am a fiscal conservative and a former two-term Republican elected official in Georgia. As such, I believe that we need to balance the federal budget, reduce the deficit over time and raise the debt ceiling automatically each year to pay our existing debts rather than default on them.

Here is how to reach those goals:

Cut military spending, which is out of control and has doubled in the last 10 years to more than $700 billion annually.

Repeal the Bush tax cuts for everyone making more than $200,000. Looking at the numbers over the last few years, it doesn’t appear that the cuts have created jobs, but they have substantially increased the federal budget deficit.

Tax all earned income for Social Security, not just income up to the current limit of a little more than $100,000.

Slash corporate welfare, such as unneeded government payments to wealthy oil companies and massive corporate farms.

According to a recent Pew survey, 60 percent of Americans say it is more important to keep Medicare and Social Security benefits as they are versus cutting the deficit. Slashing these earned benefit — not ‘entitlement’ — programs, which provide a middle-class safety net, is not supported by taxpayers, and politicians advocating this approach will pay for it at the polls this year and in 2016, regardless of which party they represent.